# help me find a passage from a JD Salinger story, please **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 11, 2001, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-a-passage-from-a-jd-salinger-story-please/49491 "2001-01-11T08:45:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Diletante](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/848f3c/32.png) [@Diletante](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diletante)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2001, 8:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-a-passage-from-a-jd-salinger-story-please/49491/1 "2001-01-11T08:45:19Z")
Hiya, need a little help. I’m looking for a Buddhist parable that was in a JD Salinger story (or novella). It’s about a monk who helps carry a woman cross a river, and then the monk’s friend asks him how he feels about it since it was forbidden for him to associate with women. The last line of the parable goes something like this: “I put the woman down miles ago, are you still carrying her?” I carefully skimmed all my Salinger, but can’t find it. It may be that it’s just buried in a part of the books that I keep looking over, or I may be just crazy and it was in some other author’s story. I’m hoping to figure out which one. If anyone could tell me which story it’s in, or better yet, where the original parable comes from, I’d appreciate it a lot. ---
**Author:** ![Alonist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e68b1a/32.png) [@Alonist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alonist)\ **Post date:** [January 11, 2001, 10:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-find-a-passage-from-a-jd-salinger-story-please/49491/2 "2001-01-11T10:44:03Z")
Well, it certainly sounds like one Salinger might have quoted…maybe in _Zooey_? I don’t have a copy of it or _Seymour_ right now, nor can I locate my copy of _The Way of Zen_ to look for a citation- the story can be found in almost any compilation of Zen stories.